‘Biggest Bomb So Far’ Hurts 68 in Johannesburg

A powerful bomb explosion today injured 68 people, including children walking to a movie theater and soldiers waiting to collect their pay outside an army headquarters.

Police Col. Frans Malherbe said no one was killed in the explosion that rocked the city at 9:42 a.m., sending passers-by sprawling on the ground and knocking some of them unconscious. Malherbe said the blast was “probably the biggest bomb in Johannesburg so far.”

Dozens of people were in a Red Cross emergency post, some wrapped in blankets, some on stretchers and some in chairs, a witness said.

“Most of them had cuts,” a Red Cross official said. “But two of them were unconscious.”

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion, but Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok blamed it on the outlawed African National Congress.

Hundreds of Such Attacks

The ANC has acknowledged responsibility for hundreds of similar attacks in recent years in its campaign against the white minority government in Pretoria.

The blast outside the Witwatersrand Army Command headquarters rocked buildings more than a mile away and shattered windows in about a 300-yard radius. One bystander told reporters that he saw a soldier “lying in a pool of blood with his chest and stomach blown away.”

In conflicting accounts, a witness reported seeing a black man place a cardboard box on the sidewalk and hurry away, and another said a black man parked a pickup truck, left the engine running and fled before it exploded.

South African President Pieter W. Botha condemned the attack in a statement released in Cape Town, saying it was “a dastardly and callous act by terrorists.”